Sunday, August 16, 2009

Flickr

Hi everyone,Flickr is a free online account which allows users to share and organise personal photos and videos with friends, family or even the whole world (Yahoo! Inc, 2009).

Setting up a Flickr account was a very simple process, probably the easiest and most enjoyable so far. Most likely because I thoroughly enjoy the art of photography and this site is dedicated to all those inspiring photographers from students, proud parents happy family snaps to professional artists. I could spend hours and hours searching through the wonderful categories of photos uploaded from people all around the world. It is fantastic! I especially enjoy how the genres of images to view are a jumble of alphabetised words that you simply can click on or type your own.
After multiple searches from nature, art, to fascinating abstract images I made the choice to search for bubbles. If you haven’t realised by now I love bubbles, if I were to use five words to describe them they would be fun, happiness, laughter, colourful and peaceful. Many photographers would also agree they are one of the most difficult things to photograph, making them even more enjoyable in real life. The image I have chosen above was one from the many (365,420,658 to be precise) to select from. Flickr is amazing isn’t it!

Flickr contains many brilliant features from editing, categorizing images to specific folders, the option to share photos with friends or family and my favourite linking maps to your images to show the viewer where and when you took that image. Also this allows you to see what other images have been taken from the same site. Flicker also offers the ability to create your own online photo scrapbooks, videos and framed pictures (Yahoo! Inc, 2009).

How can this fantastic tool be used in the classroom?While exploring this site further I began thinking of the multiple practical uses this tool can have within an educational context. Students and learning managers can effectively utilise this tool across all year levels and key learning areas. Safety issues would have to be addressed before students where to access the site, protecting students from the exploitation of unsafe use of the Internet. This could be done by ensuring all students profiles are set to ‘view by family and friends only’, and allowing students who have a signed permission letter from their parents/guardians approving the use of this tool allowing students the authority to use the account.

Ideas to implement this e-learning tool.Providing students the opportunity to take digital photos of their work (e.g. in KLA’s such as the visual arts, graphic design, manual arts, home economics, science) and incorporating other images from Flickr users around the world to create a storyline presentation for their peers and learning managers to view.

Teaching history and geography could effectively utilise this tool as teachers could show student’s images of sites around the world that they are learning and observe multiple perspectives of the chosen topic, creating a virtual field trip from your classroom. This tool aligns well with Oliver’s ICT framework theory (as cited in AusInfo, 2003) students will be given a set task or project e.g. creating a photo story about a specific genre (e.g. abstract art) incorporating the first aspect of the learning design. Students utilise resources such as Flickr inserting photographs of their own and others as visual stimulus to create their work, while the learning manger implements a safety procedures policy to provide learners a safe and supportive environment and ensure each student are allocated enough time to discuss any issues with the learning manager or peers and allowing every student the opportunity to access computers to complete the task.

Next to discuss is Picnik so keep posted for more great e-learning tools.
Until next time,

2 comments:

You have some great ideas on how to incorporate Flickr in the classroom. I especially like the idea of making it compulsory for students to have a permission letter from parents to access the site. This way parents know what programs their children are using at school and decide if they think it is appropriate or not. There are so many barriers to using this type of tool in the classroom and perhaps this would be a strategy to get around it.

I feel as learning managers (educators with a futures orientated perspective) we must embed technology within the curriculm on a regular basis. As these types of technoogy tools are close to our students hearts and ensuring that we incorporate them will allow learners to be more engaged not enraged making learing expereinces fun, authentic and real!Cheers,